step 34: love thy neighbor
During our two-hour conversation today about my post-grad plans, my dad wondered if my sister should be present. So she can learn from my experiences, he said.
I thought about it. I thought about telling her how she’ll probably get sick of making friends all the time a month into first semester. I thought about telling her how she’ll sign up for no less than two dozen clubs and show up to maybe four, then spend all her time at two. But she’ll figure these things out on her own. So I told her to be independent as possible so she will grow all she can.
But thinking about just starting college made me miss, just a little bit, the constant crowdedness of freshman year. Seeing the ever-present members of the freshman floor. Hall meetings. RA programming. Trying to fit in with existing members of the clubs you join. Making more connections at every event and party you attend.
Not that I haven’t moved on a long time ago. Just living in an on-campus apartment with other upperclassmen last year left me feeling a little claustrauphobic on occasion — though this might have something to do with living next to the fraternities.
What is it, then, about freshman year? Why do I look back upon it so fondly, even though I’ll give anything to not have to relive it?
I finally figured it out when I was reading my notes on my Japan trip and found the lines I’d jotted on a story our tour guide told us. It’s about this: we are all familiar with the concept “love thy neighbor,” but before this comes knowing thy neighbor.
The tour guide told us that on one Taiwanese tour, a couple of the boys he had been leading wanted a bit of help. One of their old professors moved to Japan years ago, and now that they were there, they wanted to pay him a visit. They presented him with a slip of paper, asking him to find them a taxi that would take them to the written address.
The problem was that Japan’s roads are winding and their road signs not so visible. The taxi driver, who had been at the job for years and years, simply couldn’t take the boys where they needed to go. He did know, however, the approximate area the address should be located in, and dropped them off there.
The boys were talking amongst themselves when a middle-aged man stopped to see if they needed any help.
“Ah!” he smiled. “I just happen to know a man who moved here year ago, came from Taiwan, and had taught at a university before coming. Let me take you there.”
He led the boys through paths behind the clusters of residences where they had been dropped off, taking a right on a little street here and a left on an even smaller alley there. After a 20-minute trek, the man took the boys to the door of their old professor. Delighted, they tucked him into another taxi, not wanting to make him take the long walk back on their account.
Last year, I had no idea who else lived in my apartment, except for the few freshman floormates I bumped into coming in and out of the building every so often. This man, on the other hand, not only knew who lived as far as twenty minutes away, but also knew a little something about their histories.
I’m moving into another apartment suite in a week, and I frankly probably won’t care to find out who else is there too. But in the days I get beyond halls that begin smelling like beer after dinner three nights a week, I think it’d be lovely to have such a sense of community as that man in Japan did.
